Beezle landed on Nathaniel’s shoulder, glanced where Nathaniel was looking, then immediately clapped his hands over his eyes.
“Well, the good news is that it looks like a human head and not a freaky spider-thing,” Beezle said, his eyes still covered. “The bad news is that it looks like it’s stuck.”
“It is not stuck,” Nathaniel said calmly. “Madeline, you just need to push. Once the shoulders are through, the rest of the baby will come easily.”
“Who died and made you the obstetrician?” Beezle said. “Have you done this before? It looks like she’s losing a lot of blood.”
“It is perfectly normal,” Nathaniel said.
“How do you know?” Beezle said.
“Beezle, you’re not helping,” I panted.
“Don’t worry about him,” J.B. said, stroking his fingers through my wet hair. “He’s acting like a nervous grandpa.”
“Who are you calling a grandpa?” Beezle said.
“Yes, who are you calling a grandpa? That is my right alone,” a silky voice said.
I looked toward the voice, and there stood Lucifer, flanked by Alerian and Puck. They were just on the edge of the clearing.
“Did you think you would be able to stop me with this feeble attempt at escape?” he said.
I’d never seen him so angry, but it was that terrifying kind of still anger, the kind that doesn’t seem obvious until the person suddenly snaps and lunges at you with a knife.
“Go away,” I said weakly. “You can’t have him. He’s mine.”
“No,” Lucifer said. “He is mine. As are you. Mine to manipulate, mine to control, mine to keep forever.”
He started toward our little cluster of people, then stopped abruptly, fury rising on his face. J.B.’s head was just above mine, and I saw him smile with satisfaction.
“I put a circle around us,” he said. “This is my kingdom, and it should have a little more oomph than your regular ordinary spell circle.”
“Ah, I thought the trees looked familiar. This is the woods around Amarantha’s castle,” I said. “Apparently my brain directed us somewhere safe.”
“How would you know what the trees looked like?” Beezle said, his eyes still covered. “You burned down half the forest.”
“How many times do I need to say it was an accident?” I said.
Lucifer pounded his fist on the invisible wall of the circle. “You cannot stay in there forever. You belong to me, and so does your child. And when you emerge I will claim what is mine.”
“I belong to no one but myself,” I said. “And my baby is mine, mine and Gabriel’s.”
I had a moment to wonder why on earth Puck and Alerian were with Lucifer; then I suddenly felt it. It was happening. It was happening right now.
“He’s coming!” I shouted to Nathaniel, and I gave a tremendous push, pouring all of my remaining energy into giving birth to my son.
It seemed like the world narrowed to this one action, just me and Nathaniel and the baby between us, and then the pressure abruptly ceased, and he was free.
Nathaniel wiped the baby’s face with a handkerchief he pulled from his pocket, and my son gave a loud, angry cry.
“Let me see him,” I said, trying to sit up. “I want to see him.”
Beezle peeked out from between his fingers. “He looks like an alien.”
Nathaniel held the baby up so I could see him—a perfectly normal-looking human baby, his skin mottled purple and red from the birth. As I watched, tiny little white wings unfolded from his back.
I burst into tears and reached for him.
“I need to cut the umbilical cord,” Nathaniel said, and used his magic to do so.
A moment later my son was in my arms, his angry little face being cleaned with my tears. My wings unfolded from my back and closed around us, keeping us safe inside. My son and me. My son.
“He’s mad that it’s so cold out here,” Jude said.
Nathaniel quickly unbuttoned his shirt and handed it to me to wrap the baby in.
“Shh,” I said. “Shh, it’s all right.”
He quieted immediately, blinking up at me with eyes the color of the sky in deepest space. His hair was as black as mine and he had a full head of it, wild and thick.
“He can’t really see you,” J.B. said. “But he knows your voice.”
I stared at the baby in wonder, at the tiny perfection of his little eyelashes and lips, at his so-small fingers and toes.
“He’s perfect,” I said.
Beezle fluttered over to my shoulder, peering down at the baby. “I still say he looks like an alien. He looks just like you did when you were born.”
“Then he will be beautiful,” J.B. said, and kissed the top of my head.
The ever-practical Nathaniel had been cleaning me up and fashioning a kind of skirt out of his coat for me to wear while we were all cooing over the baby. J.B. helped me to my feet, and Nathaniel wrapped the cloth around my waist. I wobbled a little as I stood.
Nathaniel and J.B. flanked me, both of them helping me stay on my feet, and Jude and Samiel joined the line. Beezle had clung to my shoulder throughout. Now we all faced the furious Lucifer and his brothers.
Puck winked at me. Normally this would make me want to blast him in the face with nightfire, but I was feeling so at peace at the moment that I couldn’t work up the energy to be mad. The birth of my child and the revelation that I didn’t need to use the shadow to exercise my power had gone a long way toward improving my feelings about the world.
Of course, we were basically trapped inside a circle inside J.B.’s forest, and Lucifer waited outside for us to get tired or go crazy. Obviously this situation was not sustainable.
“What are you going to call him?” Beezle said.
“I have no idea,” I said. “I guess I thought I would have more time to think about it.”
I didn’t say that I’d always secretly been worried that he would be a monster, like so many of Lucifer’s children, and that it had seemed like bad luck to think of names for something that might have to be destroyed or locked up. It seemed like a miracle that given this child’s bloodlines he was completely normal—or as normal as a kid with wings could be.
Lucifer seemed to grow in size as we watched. I remember he had done this once before, to try to stare me down when I’d been insubordinate. Puck seemed vaguely amused by Lucifer’s display. Alerian appeared bored.
I felt the waves of frustration and anger coming from Lucifer, and then it seemed like there was more pressure in the air than there had been before.
“He’s trying to break the circle,” I said, holding my baby a little closer. After the initial bout of crying, he had settled down, and now seemed to be looking around in curiosity with his unfocused eyes.
“The circle should hold,” J.B. said. “He’s not in his kingdom. He’s in mine. This is my ground, and my power comes from here.”
“But we can’t stay here forever,” Jude said.
“No, you cannot stay there forever,” Lucifer repeated, and he pressed his will against the circle again.
J.B. seemed awfully confident that the protection would hold, but I wasn’t sure. Lucifer was a lot stronger than J.B., even if this was J.B.’s home ground. And Lucifer was very determined.
“Nathaniel,” I said, but he had anticipated me.
The portal opened in front of us, and through it I could see the panting, happy faces of Lock and Barrel.
“See ya,” I said to Lucifer with a salute, and stepped into the portal with my baby snuggled close to me and Beezle on my shoulder.
My grandfather’s roar of rage followed me into the portal.
My son began to cry as soon as we entered. I couldn’t blame him. It felt horrible to pass through a portal when you were an adult. I couldn’t imagine what it felt like for a little baby, so recently snug and warm inside his mom and now exposed to a world that was loud and cold and hurt.
A moment later I was in my own living room, wi
th the dogs clustering around me. I sat down on the floor, exhausted, relieved to be home and safe. Lucifer could not get me here. The power of the domicile was absolute over a creature like him.
Lock and Barrel stuck their wet noses into the bundle in my arms, sniffing the baby. He stopped crying as soon as the dogs approached, and I heard him make a little coo.
The horror of everything I’d been through—how close I’d come to losing my son forever—hit me then. When Nathaniel emerged from the portal, he found me weeping on the floor, holding my baby tight to me. Beezle sat on my shoulder, patting the side of my head. He flew away with a sigh of relief when Nathaniel arrived.
“Maybe you can get her to calm down,” he said.
He knelt down beside me, put his lips in my hair and his arms around me. “You are safe. You are safe. Lucifer can’t get him here.”
The others climbed out of the portal. They all dispersed to perform various tasks—Jude to dress, Samiel to cook, J.B. to walk to the front window and glance worriedly out. Jack stood with hands in his pockets, looking awkward.
J.B. went still as he lifted the curtain aside. “There’s a giant squid in the middle of the street.”
I laughed. It was a wet, surprised laugh, coming so close on the heels of my tears. “Beezle told you there was a squid.”
“And fire,” J.B. said, wrinkling his nose. “I can’t believe anyone on this block wants to keep living here. I wouldn’t be able to eat if I knew that thing was outside my front door.”
“Imagine how I feel,” Beezle said. “Calamari is one of my favorite foods, and I may never be able to stomach it again.”
“I’m not worried,” J.B. said. “I’m sure you’ll find something else to stuff yourself with.”
“Let’s get you into the shower,” Nathaniel said.
He helped me up and into the bathroom, throwing away the jacket that was wrapped around my waist. He held out his arms for the baby so I could take off my shirt.
I shrank back, holding my son to my chest. I didn’t want to let him go, not even for a second.
“I won’t let anything happen to him,” Nathaniel said gently. “I will care for him as if he were my own.”
“What if Lucifer comes?” I whispered. “He’ll figure out where I am soon enough.”
“Yes,” Nathaniel said. That was one of the things I liked about Nathaniel. He didn’t try to sugarcoat. “But he is not here now. I am. And you need to clean yourself. While you do this, I will wash the baby.”
“He needs special stuff,” I said helplessly. “Like baby shampoo and whatever. I don’t have any of that.”
“Madeline,” he said, and his voice was full of infinite patience. “I know how to do magic.”
“Right,” I said. I still didn’t want to let my baby go. He was mine.
“Madeline,” he said again, and he held his hands out. “I was the first person to hold him. Trust me.”
I did trust him. Because you couldn’t love without trust. And finally, after everything we had been through together, after he had protected me from harm over and over, I did trust him. I loved him.
But again, the circumstances didn’t seem right to tell him. I handed Nathaniel my son, and knew he would take care of him.
I took off my pajama shirt, shoved it in the trash bin (I seemed to be throwing away a lot of clothing lately) and climbed in the shower. I turned the water up as hot as I could make it and scrubbed all over until I felt really clean. My legs looked even worse than I’d thought. Birth is a messy thing.
My belly felt strangely empty. I poked the formerly taut bump and everything there kind of jiggled around.
“Oh, that’s sexy,” I said.
I turned off the water and climbed out of the shower, wrapping up in a bathrobe and putting a towel around my head. Nathaniel was nowhere to be seen.
When I entered the hallway I could hear a lot of ruckus coming from the kitchen. I padded toward the noise in my bare feet.
Nathaniel was washing the baby in the kitchen sink. Beezle was sitting on his shoulder, giving him instructions, which Nathaniel ignored. Jude and Samiel were making goofy faces at my son, and J.B. was watching all of it with an indulgent smile on his face.
“Nothing like a baby to turn perfectly rational adults into a bunch of goofballs,” J.B. said. “He is pretty cute, though. He looks just like you.”
I looked critically at my offspring, a tiny being cradled so gently in Nathaniel’s huge hands. “I can’t tell. He just looks little and wrinkly to me right now.”
“Gargoyle, make yourself useful and hand me that towel,” Nathaniel said, indicating a small baby towel with a blue elephant on it that was on the counter beside J.B.
“Where did we get that?” I asked. I knew for sure that I had not bought any baby stuff.
“I got it,” Beezle said. “Or rather, Samiel and I did.”
“When did you have time to go baby shopping with all the crises going on around here?”
Beezle shrugged as he handed the towel to Nathaniel. “We did it a while ago.”
Samiel nodded. We didn’t think you would have time, so we got towels and diapers and pajamas and all that stuff.
“Don’t cry again,” Beezle said. “I just didn’t want the kid to spend the first week of his life wrapped in a dishcloth, which is what would have happened if we had left you in charge.”
I wiped at my eyes, which had grown suspiciously watery. “You’re probably right. Although I don’t even know how to put the diaper on him, so I’m not sure they’ll do me much good.”
Nathaniel very gently laid the baby on the counter. He covered him all over with baby lotion, expertly wrapped him up in a diaper, put him in a cute little footie sleeper that had lions printed on it, and topped off his head with a matching hat. His little baby wings tucked neatly inside the sleeper. No one would ever know they were there. Then Nathaniel presented my child to me, all perfect and clean and sweet-smelling, and said, “You should feed him.”
“With what?” I asked blankly as I snuggled my little bundle to my shoulder.
“With those,” Beezle said, pointing at my chest.
“Oh,” I said. I had no idea how that would work. It didn’t feel like there was any milk in there.
“You’ll figure it out,” J.B. said, correctly interpreting my expression.
“Oookay,” I said, and went into the bedroom to try to figure it out. Luckily the kid knew what to do, and after a bit he pulled away, so I figured he had gotten what he needed out of me.
I carefully placed him in the very center of the bed with no blankets around him—I had read enough of the pregnancy book to know that babies shouldn’t be surrounded with blankets because they could suffocate—and got dressed in some comfy sweats and thick socks. Then I lay down on the bed beside him, listening to him breathe. His eyes were closed and he was making little suckling motions with his lips.
I kissed his soft little cheek, and wished that Gabriel were here to see him. Gabriel would have been the world’s most amazing dad.
Of course, I reflected, Nathaniel seemed like he would be a pretty good stepfather. He already knew how to do the diaper-fu, which was more than I could say. I wondered how long I could pass off diaper duty by claiming incompetence.
I put my head down on the mattress, just watching my son’s chest rise and fall with his quiet little breaths. I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew the baby was screaming, the house was shaking, and there was noise like thunder. Lightning flashed outside the bedroom window.
Either there was an earthquake in Chicago, or the apocalypse had arrived.
Nathaniel appeared in the doorway. “Lucifer is outside. As you may guess, he is not very happy.”
16
I scooped my son up and followed Nathaniel into the living room. All the men had washed and changed into clean clothes, and there were the remains of several take-out pizzas on the table. Beezle was perched on the mantel, reading the pregnancy book I’d
never finished. The dogs were on the floor, sleeping.
My stomach rumbled at the sight of the pizza. “Did you save any for me?”
“Pizza isn’t good for the baby,” Beezle announced.
“The baby isn’t going to be eating the pizza,” I said.
“Oh, yes, he is,” Beezle said. “Whatever you eat, he eats. And I don’t think pepperoni is good flavoring for milk.”
“You, of all people, will not be monitoring my food intake for nutritive value,” I said. “Your body probably hasn’t seen anything resembling a vitamin in decades.”
Samiel, Jude, J.B. and Jack stood in the front picture window, looking out. I handed the baby to Nathaniel so I could go see what they were all gawping at.
The floor trembled, and I stumbled into Samiel, who caught me and set me upright.
He’s trying really hard to take down the house, Samiel signed, pointing outside.
My grandfather stood in the center of the street, again flanked by Alerian and Puck. They seemed to be combining their powers to break the protective spells Nathaniel and I had put around the house.
The squid had disappeared. I doubted the city had found a way to transport it in the short time we’d been home, so it was very likely one of the brothers had zapped it into oblivion.
Lucifer looked up at the window, as if he sensed my presence there. I gasped and stepped back. He wasn’t the handsome angel anymore, more beautiful than the sun. His face was twisted and dark, and his eyes burned red. Obsidian horns had sprouted from his head, and his beautiful feathered wings were the leathery appendages of a bat. This was the devil that so many had feared. This was the true Prince of Darkness, and he would not be thwarted by me.
“They can’t break the protection of the domicile,” I said. “Can they?”
“I don’t think so,” Beezle said. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while. The shifter was able to because, I think, he was not a fully formed creature. But Lucifer and Puck and Alerian—their personalities and their powers have been well established for eons. The magic that protects a home would recognize them and keep them out. However, they can try to break the spells you two put around the house.”
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